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The Lucas Plan (from Arms Production to Socially Useful Production)
In January 1976 the shop stewards at Lucas Aerospace published an Alternative Plan for the future of their company. The plan was in response to the company’s announcement that thousands of jobs were to be cut to enable industrial restructuring in the face of technological change and international competition. Instead of being made redundant the workforce argued for their right to develop socially useful products.

The workers argued that state support would be better used developing of socially useful products and production then supplying military contracts.

To draw up the Plan, shop stewards consulted their members and built the Plan from the knowledge, skills and experience of the workforce. The resulting plan included over 150 designs for alternative products. Market analyses, economic arguments and training programmes were included in the Plan. The Plan also included outlines to re-organise the workforce into teams combining the workers shop floor tacit knowledge with theoretical engineering from the designers.

Publications related to the Lucas Plan
The publications below cover the history of the Lucas Plan, explore Socially Useful Production and the possibility of introducing more widely the concepts the Plan developed.


 * 'The Lucas Plan and Socially Useful Production', Spokesman Books.
 * Hilary Wainwright & Dave Elliott, 'The Lucas Plan - A New Trade Unionism in the Making?' Spokesman Books.
 * Mike Cooley, 'Architect or Bee? The Human Price of Technology', Foreword by Frances O'Grady, Spokesman Books (2016) ISBN: 978 0 85124 8493